Design and Functionality

We’ve got the blue version of the cooler for our tests. It looks attractive:

It’s easy to see that the cooler’s heatsink is exactly one half of the dual-section heatsink of the PH-TC14P? model, with five 8mm copper heat pipes.

The pipes go out of the nickel-plated copper base and pierce the whole of the heatsink in a regular pattern.

So, the Phanteks engineers just cut off one half of their super-cooler and bent the pipes in such a way that the resulting heatsink was parallel to the cooler's base and, consequently, to the mainboard. That's the quick and easy way to make new coolers!

Each heatsink fin is 140x50 millimeters, so the total heat dissipation area is about 6000 sq. cm. That’s quite a lot for a down-draft cooler but the best of tower-design models have twice the dissipation area and are going to be more efficient, other factors being the same.

The pipes are soldered to the cooler’s base, although there is a small gap visible between the base and two of the pipes.

Hopefully, this gap doesn’t go deep into the base.

The finish quality is as good as that of the cooler’s senior cousin. We can see traces of the milling machine but cannot feel them by touch.

The cooler’s base is convex and we’ll discuss this more in the Tests section of our review.

The Phanteks PH-TC14CS is shipped with two 9-blade 140mm PH-F140 fans:

We talked about these fans in our review of the previous Phanteks and their specs haven't changed. Their speed is PWM-regulated within a range of 900 to 1200 RPM. The maximum speed is 1300 RPM (if the PWM regulation is disabled). The rest of their specs are listed in the table above.

The electrical parameters and bearing type of the fans haven’t changed, either:

The exclusive Updraft Floating Balance bearing with balance ring is expected to last through 150,000 hours (or 17 years) of continuous operation.

There are silicone strips with one gluey side in the product box. They can be glued to the sides of the heatsink to reduce vibrations and noise.

After that you secure the fans with wire brackets hooked on to the heatsink's sides.

With the two fans attached, the Phanteks PH-TC14CS grows up to 161x151x140.5 millimeters and 900 grams.